She was 35 — "checkout time" for women, as Trump once told Howard Stern — and no longer the dewy fox he'd met seven years earlier. A visitor to one of Trump's homes, late into Melania's pregnancy, recalls him remarking that he agreed to the baby on the condition that Melania would get her body back. "She promised him that everything would go back to the way it was," says this guest; it struck this person as a "contract." And he was simply rude to her. "There was no 'How do you feel?' No opening of doors, making sure she didn't fall. Just 'You wanted to have a baby.'"

Lisa Bytner, who did P.R. for Trump Model Management in 1999, said Melania Trump “doesn’t make waves.”

"He begged her to praise him [to me] as a husband . . . . Literally, he said, 'Tell him I'm a really good husband.' She looked at him, and he repeated himself. And she said, 'Yeah, he's a really good husband.' It was being dragged out of her," says D'Antonio. Then she repeated a story D'Antonio had already heard from Trump: Tom Cruise once called Donald to see if he could use the Wollman skating rink in Central Park (which Trump had renovated with much fanfare in 1986) during off-hours. Donald was very flattered that the actor had called him personally—but Melania pointed out, "Oh, but, Donald, you're more famous than he is." Trump seemed to feel that this story was "an example of their affection," recalls D'Antonio. "Praising his fame, hyping his fame, was a wifely duty. The people in Trump's orbit have all memorised the same stories. And they repeat them word for word."

Before her husband’s inauguration, Melania Trump said her champion cause as first lady would be cyberbullying, but as Trump’s first milestone, 100 days in office, is reached, Melania and son Barron seemingly live as far under the radar as Trumps possibly can.